Rollin’!
Mistletoes & Uh-Ohs!
Vera Walden
Lineage : Evil Angel
Position : None
Posts : 170
Guild : The Rune Knights
Cosmic Coins : 10
Dungeon Tokens : 0
Experience : 6,237
Character Sheet
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Vera Walden-
Lineage : Evil Angel
Position : None
Posts : 170
Guild : The Rune Knights
Cosmic Coins : 10
Dungeon Tokens : 0
Experience : 6,237
Character Sheet
First Skill:
Second Skill:
Third Skill:
Hope I’m doing this right.
NPC- Posts : 23942
Mentor : Admin
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The member 'Vera Walden' has done the following action : Dice Rolls
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'Normal Dice' :
Vera Walden-
Lineage : Evil Angel
Position : None
Posts : 170
Guild : The Rune Knights
Cosmic Coins : 10
Dungeon Tokens : 0
Experience : 6,237
Character Sheet
First Skill:
Second Skill:
Third Skill:
A LITTLE BIT OF SUGAR BUT LOTS OF POISON TOO
"Guess the gift, get the prize!," came the jovial replica of Santa Claus. "Come on, come on, come on!”
Vera showed no signs of a competitive spirit, but passed her fingers over the hefty ribbon patiently in front of her curious viewers and turned the box on its side. When she heard a soft clink from within it managed to hold her attention, and she found herself being extra careful for a moment, not wanting to break it. An endearing look of anticipation came into her eyes, as if she had transformed into a ragdoll cat ready to pounce on some unsuspecting critter. She, just as gingerly as the first time, turned it on its adjacent side in precious wonder, hardly aware that she was taking too long to determine its contents, but it wasn’t the thing inside it that made her so simple-minded. The prettiness of the wrapping was what had her quite mesmerized.
She had never seen such a beautiful covering with so many colors and patterns, not without the aid of a few illegal substances. Fake Santa’s playful, light-hearted pushing had Vera pouting and glaring secretively over her shoulder. She had brought it closer to her, with hair curtained about her face, guessed at random only to shut him up.
It was a petty, untruthful attempt. She had not correctly guessed the mystery prize inside. Then there came a deadly stillness after she deadpanned the word ‘potato’ with notable irritability, her empty warning not without consequence. That had worried the false man of Christmas for a second, and then, as he finally released a hearty chuckle, the reason for his laughter flashed across her mind. It all started pretty faintly.
Of course, there would be a time when her sanity would deteriorate and wither away, but she never expected insanity to sound so shrill, so musical. The trilling of wholesome tree rodents and their forever stressed-out father, Dave, would swell from within and the dumbfounded woman, looking like a vending machine with an ‘out of order’ sign, stood there motionless. Vera shot Sunshine and Captain Abs an unblinking look which then gradually turned into mild amusement and swayed her head to the horrendously catchy beat; that no one else but her could hear.
As she had no idea that this was all actually taking place in her mind, she seemed a downright fool in white winter apparel dancing to the dead air with an ornate box in her grasp. Her eyes seemed less lively, and across them came a veil of confusion. Was no one going to mention the everlasting loop? The song was cute, but it sure wasn’t worth the encore.
The cogs of her brain worked suddenly as she comprehended why no one else was dancing with her. Could she have been—“Christmas accepted a challenge somewhere and thought it clever to take a massive dump on me. Surprise! it’s not tinsel or coal. I’ve been cursed.” Said Vera calmly at first, only to blurt out a graceless warning the next: “Don’t touch the presents, you fools!”
She never did like festivals.
Cillian duCrosse-
Lineage : Legend of the Lich
Position : None
Posts : 175
Guild : Confidence Intl.
Cosmic Coins : 0
Dungeon Tokens : 0
Experience : 394,517
Character Sheet
First Skill: Necrothurgy
Second Skill:
Third Skill:
Rolling for Guess the Gift!
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Mentor : Admin
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The member 'Cillian duCrosse' has done the following action : Dice Rolls
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Cillian duCrosse-
Lineage : Legend of the Lich
Position : None
Posts : 175
Guild : Confidence Intl.
Cosmic Coins : 0
Dungeon Tokens : 0
Experience : 394,517
Character Sheet
First Skill: Necrothurgy
Second Skill:
Third Skill:
Even though my life hasn't been all that great
 634 WORDS @Dela @Vera Walden THEME SONG I have seen war, famine; witnessed the genocide. Have seen the changes in human nature and history, and I am still here, standing alone. Til the end, I will be there too. To witness the endless carnage, to live this harsh reality. Cause I have been cursed, Cursed with immortality. | Cillian stood and watched with amusement as Vera turned the gift slowly in her hands, staring at it like she was a goddess and the present was the entirety of the cosmos for her to admire. He giggled lightly at the intensity with which she stared, her gaze so focused with fascination that it was like the rest of the world didn’t even exist. Not currently participating in the game himself, he leaned over toward Dela with a grin and whispered, “She looks like she took a heavier dose than normal today, eh?” Vera constantly looked like she was in some kind drug induced hallucination, though normally that was because she had actually been taking drugs. How she got away with that and being a Rune Knight was beyond Cillian’s ability to guess, but it was certainly entertaining. She had guessed wrong it seemed, but that wasn’t really the most interesting part. No, the most interesting part was when the purple haired woman looked up at both of her companions like her brain had loosed the most epic of farts, only to speak in a deadpan tone about how she’d been cursed by the present. “Okay, well now I’m just curious,” he told her, reaching forward and plucking the present unceremoniously out of her hand. Unlike Vera, he gave it a good shake, rattling the package around and smelling it, listening intently to what might be inside and weighing it, wracking his brain with what could be inside and what kind of curse she might have been talking about. Nothing really noteworthy happened that he noticed, his brain catching the change in music but not immediately interpreting it as being in his head rather than coming from the speakers of the event. “Hmmmm… I’m gonna guess it’s a board game of some kind?” he said, turning to look at the game attendant. The man dressed like Santa smiled brightly with a ‘Ho ho ho!’, confirming Cillian’s guess to be right. “Oh, fuck yes!” The tall, white haired man, with no understanding or regard to how entranced Vera had been with the wrapping job, tore the paper and ribbons to shreds to reach the game within, which he would be allowed to keep for guessing the present correctly. As he held the prize with a beaming smile, the slivers of glittered and colorful paper falling haphazardly onto the snow at his feet, the fake Santa handed him a few peppermints as an added bonus for playing the game. Of course, his height advantage allowed him to notice something in that moment that the girls had yet to. Hovering above their heads was a sprig of mistletoe, magically dangling in the air as it waited for someone to fulfill its purpose. He stared at it briefly with a dumbfounded expression before a giggle trickled out of his throat, his face smearing with a wide, shit eating grin as he casually took a large step backward, leaving the two women alone beneath the leafy greens and pointing it out to their attention. “Alright ladies. Let’s see some true holiday spirit,” he told them, practically bouncing on his toes with delight over the opportunity to force the two anti-social women to swap a kiss with one another. With any other guy, someone might think he was doing this out of some sleazy fetish to watch two women share spit with one another, but Vera and Dela knew Cillian better than that. He barely had a sexual bone in his body, and to him this was purely about the comedy of the two women stepping outside of their comfort zones when it came to physicality. Or at least, physicality without the assistance of hallucinogens. “Wait, did they start that song over? Are they playing that thing on a loop…?” |
I figure that if I live long enough, something good might happen.
Dela
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Lineage : Descendant of the Candy Witch
Position : None
Faction : The Rune Knights
Posts : 184
Cosmic Coins : 0
Dungeon Tokens : 0
Experience : 1,987,286
While Vera was like the cautious, mild-tempered cat full of precious wonder at the shiny, Dela was the type of cat that would bat the thing off the table and cared not for the damage it caused. In fact, she didn't even pick it up. One hand was snaked out of her pocket and batting it around the table, poking it, and spinning it on one corner as she paid more attention to her Violet Space Cadet and The Boneless Wonder's reactions to her magpie-like reaction to the wrapping. "She better not have," Dela muttered to the giant immortal pain in her pride.
Judging by Vera's inexplicable change in demeanor, Dela wasn't certain if she was high or not. Before this she thought her fellow Rune Knight was sober, but... Either this was one heckuva 'head empty, turn off and back on again' moment, or whatever she snorted was only just now rearing its ugly head. Her bright blue eyes narrowed suspiciously and she jabbed a rainbow-painted fingernail at her. "Don't you dare explode again," was all she said, though the threat was clear. No, she intended to stay stone-cold sober this event, even if she had to let Chester trample her to death to accomplish it. Like heck she was waking up naked again at Cillian's place, that old lady "Mmm Mmm"ing her and her continued undefiled garden of unwilling chastity.
Also, she really didn't want to ever think of what she'd done last time again. She'd all but written Cillian off as a potential lover, which was a shame. He was the only other immortal she knew, which had given her hope. The Ravager... not only had she named it, but it didn't even rustle within its cave. It was dead. The dry, dead bone.
There was a mention of a curse, which Dela couldn't wrap her around, nor did she waste energy on it. Cillian tried to investigate the claim but seemed to only benefit by winning the prize. Dela, despite playing hackysack with her box, seemed uncursed as well, unless you could count the worsening of the winter snow as a curse. Like the others, she didn't realize it was only snowing on her from a small, angry cloud a few feet over her head. Growing bored with this activity, she popped the small box back up into her hands, noting how mangled it was. She gave it one actual shake and then answered the vendor. "Chocolate bar."
Of course, she was right, and now she had a chocolate bar to eat later. She stuck it in a pocket and turned just in time to notice Cillian's devious grinning. Had he always been standing so far away? After glancing up, she sighed. Oh, that's why. Her unamused face intensified as she made little mystery of her disgust with him for various reasons, but as she turned toward her pretty, goofy friend, her face softened. Was that her own brand of deviousness on her face? Though she was a couple of inches shorter than Vera, Dela still took up the role of the aggressor and reached up to cup both of those pale cheeks in her hands. "Merry Christmas, Vera-Jayne," she nearly purred before pulling the sweet face down to her own cherry lipglossed pout. As long as Vera didn't spaz out and jerk away or explode into hallucinogenic dust, Dela would plant a sincere enough kiss on the other woman that she could hear her dead parents screaming in old-fashioned dismay.
[wc: 585 || total: 1736/6000 || Gift Guess and Mistletoe complete.]
Judging by Vera's inexplicable change in demeanor, Dela wasn't certain if she was high or not. Before this she thought her fellow Rune Knight was sober, but... Either this was one heckuva 'head empty, turn off and back on again' moment, or whatever she snorted was only just now rearing its ugly head. Her bright blue eyes narrowed suspiciously and she jabbed a rainbow-painted fingernail at her. "Don't you dare explode again," was all she said, though the threat was clear. No, she intended to stay stone-cold sober this event, even if she had to let Chester trample her to death to accomplish it. Like heck she was waking up naked again at Cillian's place, that old lady "Mmm Mmm"ing her and her continued undefiled garden of unwilling chastity.
Also, she really didn't want to ever think of what she'd done last time again. She'd all but written Cillian off as a potential lover, which was a shame. He was the only other immortal she knew, which had given her hope. The Ravager... not only had she named it, but it didn't even rustle within its cave. It was dead. The dry, dead bone.
There was a mention of a curse, which Dela couldn't wrap her around, nor did she waste energy on it. Cillian tried to investigate the claim but seemed to only benefit by winning the prize. Dela, despite playing hackysack with her box, seemed uncursed as well, unless you could count the worsening of the winter snow as a curse. Like the others, she didn't realize it was only snowing on her from a small, angry cloud a few feet over her head. Growing bored with this activity, she popped the small box back up into her hands, noting how mangled it was. She gave it one actual shake and then answered the vendor. "Chocolate bar."
Of course, she was right, and now she had a chocolate bar to eat later. She stuck it in a pocket and turned just in time to notice Cillian's devious grinning. Had he always been standing so far away? After glancing up, she sighed. Oh, that's why. Her unamused face intensified as she made little mystery of her disgust with him for various reasons, but as she turned toward her pretty, goofy friend, her face softened. Was that her own brand of deviousness on her face? Though she was a couple of inches shorter than Vera, Dela still took up the role of the aggressor and reached up to cup both of those pale cheeks in her hands. "Merry Christmas, Vera-Jayne," she nearly purred before pulling the sweet face down to her own cherry lipglossed pout. As long as Vera didn't spaz out and jerk away or explode into hallucinogenic dust, Dela would plant a sincere enough kiss on the other woman that she could hear her dead parents screaming in old-fashioned dismay.
[wc: 585 || total: 1736/6000 || Gift Guess and Mistletoe complete.]
Vera Walden-
Lineage : Evil Angel
Position : None
Posts : 170
Guild : The Rune Knights
Cosmic Coins : 10
Dungeon Tokens : 0
Experience : 6,237
Character Sheet
First Skill:
Second Skill:
Third Skill:
A LITTLE BIT OF SUGAR BUT LOTS OF POISON TOO
"You’re just curious," echoed Vera, watching him disregard her warning, as he relieved her of the present, looking like a fox that had been playing with its food, and tearing apart its tender flesh only seconds later. The pieces of her broken heart fell with the paper wrapping she once adored in her sober state. The sad cotton ball was sorely convinced the universe just hated her and justified the loss of the great shiny. Nothing could cheer her up now, except for the questionable inhaler she tucked away once more prior to their gathering, which was suddenly nowhere to be found. Not under her sweater, not under her bra, and not under her fluffy white hat with the pink puff on top. Jingle balls, where in the flying figgy pudding hell did she leave it at?
"Don’t you dare explode," said Dela, suddenly quite successful at getting her attention and causing her pout to broaden. As Vera tried to keep an eye out for her missing contraption, Walden’s heavy eyelids drooped, and she began to sulk. Surely few embarrassing instances had ever entertained her so much as waking up beside the rainbow-nailed woman and thinking she might have vigorously bumped uglies with her. There was not a sliver of disgust to be felt by that thought. It didn’t happen in the way she thought it did, but it certainly made her laugh after the weight of the shock had passed. And she imagined Cillian got a kick out of it as well, just like he always did. Nothing ever really fazed him and that served both as a headache and a very endearing trait.
He had been unaffected by their shenanigans, but the funny guilt she felt for it had seemed to her constant. And so her mind had begun to wander back to the incident unnecessarily, as she had practically done the unforgivable to her friends. And, yet, having a conscience sucked more than not possessing one. While she stood mulling over these things, a mention of chocolate bars and holiday spirit pulled her focus away and reminded her to stay in the present.
She followed Dela’s gaze and looked to where Cillian stood grinning from ear to ear. The reason for his smile magically hovered over their heads with all the vibrance of Christmas and it took Vera a minute or two to realize what that meant for her. Her face glowed begrudgingly with uncertainty and hope. She thought of initiating it, and wondered how it would all end. Now, she imagined all the parents in the room would try to pray the gay away. Not that she gave a rat’s dying ass about that.
With hands closing in upon the skin of her cheeks, she gazed at Dela through thick lashes admiringly and kissed her glossy pout with a feather-like softness. For a moment she thought of regarding this as a hallucinogenic dream. But she was sure pretty sure she tasted what she assumed to be cherry, was it? Cotton candy personified was thankful for her matte-lipstick, shade ‘brokebat mountain’, in other words, the color purple, was deemed smudge-proof or else poor Dela would have tasted something relatively unpleasant.
“Happy New Year, Dela,” Vera-Jayne replied stupidly, so dazed and disoriented that she had forgotten the actual holiday they were celebrating. Good thing she was under a powerful curse that involved squeaky voices and chipmunks. Her brain was operating correctly now.
Vera moved like an otherworldly being. She gingerly grabbed Dela’s sleeve and Cillian’s sleeve led them away from the gift-guessing to what looked like an ugly sweater contest. They supplied the sweaters; all they needed to use was their imagination and greatest effort to make it the ugliest sweater in the world.
That didn’t seem like such a challenge.
A couple of finger-pricking moments later, Vera stopped trying and allowed the gingerbread man patch to fall away from the fabric. The sweater was void of any real decoration; she knew not the way of the needle and earned one peppermint out of pity. If the others had joined her previously, she made her interest clear in wanting to see the product of their hard work and possible expertise.
Cillian duCrosse-
Lineage : Legend of the Lich
Position : None
Posts : 175
Guild : Confidence Intl.
Cosmic Coins : 0
Dungeon Tokens : 0
Experience : 394,517
Character Sheet
First Skill: Necrothurgy
Second Skill:
Third Skill:
Even though my life hasn't been all that great
919/1553 WORDS @Vera Walden @Dela THEME SONG I have seen war, famine; witnessed the genocide. Have seen the changes in human nature and history, and I am still here, standing alone. Til the end, I will be there too. To witness the endless carnage, to live this harsh reality. Cause I have been cursed, Cursed with immortality. | Dela was displeased, but then again, when wasn’t she? Well, when she was accidentally high, he supposed. But hopefully that wasn’t going to be the case today, as even Dela had given Vera a sharp look and instructed her very carefully to not explode into a puff of drugs. She shot him the stinkiest of eyes as he giggled, waiting in anticipation for the show, and he was not disappointed. Dela almost a bit enthusiastically took Vera’s face in both of her hands and planted a rather passionate smooch on the other woman. And by the looks of things, the purple haired Knight was quite taken by the act, and more than a little receptive to it, as Dela damn near swept her off her feet with it to the point where Vera couldn’t even remember what holiday they were celebrating. Gods, he loved Christmas. Or at least, everything about Christmas save for the stupid song that was still stuck in his head. Once they were all wrapped up, with Cillian giving them a gentle and teasing applause, he allowed himself to be escorted away with the two women toward the next activity, which appeared to be an ugly sweater making contest. The very idea got his grin started all over again and he sat himself right down with them, immediately selecting a red sweater and a needle and sewing on the gaudiest adornments he could get his hands on out of the pile. He was nose deep in fabric, hunched over a table that was made for people much shorter than him, when something caught his attention. Cillian sat up straighter immediately, his expression unreadable and weirdly serious as he peered around the fairgrounds slowly. Why was he sensing spirits nearby? “Hey…” he told them, his voice a bit distant as he was still half focused on looking around. “Something’s not right.” He really wasn’t sure what else to tell them. He hadn’t located the spirits yet, but they had sensed him and were quickly drawing near. Trying to leave wasn’t going to do any good as they would just follow. Shooting Dela a quick, knowing glance so she would understand the nature of what he was sensing -- as she was the only woman between the two that knew he could communicate with the dead, he started setting down the items in his hand back on the table to free his hands. “How could you?” The familiar voice sent a chill down his spine, though he couldn’t quite place it in his memories. Still, it was so close that it was practically right behind him and he yelped in surprise halfway between trying to stand up. Losing his balance, he fell over in a loud and raucous clatter as man, chair, and the bits of craft supplies that had somehow gotten stuck to him all tumbled over one another into a chaotic heap on the ground. When he got his bearing, he looked up to see a couple standing above him. It was a man and a woman. More specifically, it was a king and a queen, dressed in the regalia of Pergrande, which matched their accents. The king had silver colored hair and wore an infuriated expression that bordered on murderous, while the woman had long blonde hair and was openly weeping. Cillian was shook, his crimson eyes wide. “M-mom? Dad?” he blurted out loud before he really stopped to think about how impossible this was. The very words caused his father’s face to turn even more red with malice. “You are no son of mine.” Well, this was bringing back some awkward, painful, and personal memories. Given the way that everyone else was staring, it was clear that this was not an illusion playing only in his mind, but rather those around him could see it too. Thankfully, his sense returned quickly and he recalled that both of his parents -- and indeed, the rest of his immediate family -- had died about four hundred years ago. Whatever this was, it was a trick being played on him by a foul spirit. Growling in anger, Cillian leaped up onto his feet and reached out with his senses until he had located the spirit connected to the display: a young girl that had died before she could even reach adulthood. Summoning his sansetsukon from the aether, he whipped one end of the three sectioned staff across the distance to where the spirit hovered invisibly. The little girl gasped in shock and then evaporated, her essence disrupted by the attack. But she hadn’t been the only spirit. There were at least two more that he could sense. Swinging the disjointed staff around, he whipped it at the seemingly empty air next to Vera. A ghost materialized there as a result of the attack, revealing a young woman riding upon the back of a ghostly reindeer. Cillian swiftly stepped between the ghosts and Vera, his staff whirling between his hands so fast that one almost couldn’t keep up with the movements, each end of the weapon seemingly little more than a blur as he swiped at the spectres over and over until they, too, were defeated. Ending in a readied stance, he glanced around. “There’s more!” he told the women, alerting them not to let their guards down yet. But who was summoning these spirits? Was there another necromancer nearby? There had to be. They just had to figure out who it was and take them down... |
I figure that if I live long enough, something good might happen.
Dela- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Lineage : Descendant of the Candy Witch
Position : None
Faction : The Rune Knights
Posts : 184
Cosmic Coins : 0
Dungeon Tokens : 0
Experience : 1,987,286
Dela was far too lazy to bother making something ugly to wear. Besides, she really didn't want the others to know she could sew, since back when she grew up, this had been a common practice and required skill of womenfolk, along with cooking, cleaning, and farming. Literally all of those things brought a scowl to her face and she'd avoided them ever since. She could have used tacky glitter glue instead, but she'd much rather watch Vera and Cillian make a mess of it. Watching their faces as they worked was far more entertaining than spending all her energy on a stupid sweater she'd never wear. Vera, even spacier than usual, showed little focus or skill in her efforts, and Cillian predictably approached this like a child and would throw every single option on the sweater if he could, all while giggling giddily. The trio were unlikely friends, yet it worked and, even if she tried not to admit it, hanging with them made her happy. Happiness wasn't something Dela had been looking for. In fact, she'd sorta been avoiding it so she could remain focused on her ultimate goal, but it'd come for her anyway and she was powerless to stop it. However, she wouldn't allow the happiness to bring its friend contentment with it, since she had a lot to do and couldn't afford to just slide along. She was smart enough to know you didn't have to throw everything away to accomplish something, but that she'd have to have the discipline to keep moving forward and not let them hold her back. Both could happen if there was balance and you weren't an edgelord.
The soft moment was interrupted by Cillian's sudden change in posture. Meeting his gaze, the blonde indeed knew what this meant. Spirits were nearby, be them undead zombies or otherwise. Could they not get through one frickin festival without some sort of disaster? Dela stiffened as well, looking around for anything out of the ordinary. Even if she was still trash at combat, her abilities granted by the magical girl crystal had grown with use, so she noticed something on the edge of her sensory range. She could have run right at it to nip this in the bud, but again, she wasn't a strong fighter. She'd wait to see what happened instead, and boy did she get a show.
It might have been a short show, but for someone as nosey as Dela was for information on everyone, the smallest glimpse into both of her equally secretive pals' hidden histories was enough to keep her enraptured in her seat instead of being helpful. She'd never seen him so genuinely shaken, and she could tell the images looming behind him were both not real and very old given the clothing style. Her mind, which was deceptively sharp, entered into a Sherlockian state and gleaned anything she could about them by observing alone. Cillian hardly needed to call them 'mom and dad' before she'd deduced it was the case, and that, if she had learned anything about Pergrandian history and language, Cillian had once been a prince. Her eyes then slipped to Cillian as she observed anger in him for the first time, though it was certainly not a surprise. He dispatched the spirit that caused this blast from the past quickly before any more information could leak, then took out a second before it could pull any shenanigans for her to learn from. Dela'd have to be satisfied with just this snippet about her infuriatingly closed-off friend (as if she wasn't a hypocrite that did the same), so she pulled out her trusty black book and started scribbling on the page titled 'Cillian'. It wasn't like her bear-trap mind could forget, but she took no chances. She never knew when something would be useful and had to make sure there was a failsafe in place to make maximum use of it all. The Rune Knights had certainly benefitted from this by now, though it had done very little for her own, more pressing ambitions.
Dela had been so focused on taking extensive notes that she hadn't noticed the third spirit sneaking up behind her. The other two had been drawn to Cillian due to his abilities, and no doubt this one was too, but it was less fussy about actually getting to the necromancer and would take whoever was closest. First, she noticed the sudden onset of abject fear without a source. The terror was so intense that she felt instantly nauseated. Slowly turning, she saw the spirit looming where a crowd used to be and had wisely run away to take cover. It was a black entity shrouded in dark fabric, with scraggly thorns and branches for a crown and collar. A bony finger raised and pointed at her as she stood. The probing in her mind was immediate, and that's when the real nightmare started.
The mind-warping abilities changed the landscape of Era into that of the magical girl wasteland, the purgatory-like forest where devoured souls contracted to Aberneel went to fossilize into what looked like dead trees. The sky overhead was black, even though the grass and trees were illuminated in twilight. This time, she wasn't there because she'd died and was visiting Elle until he could res. No, it was her turn. Her soul had been devoured by the twisted trickster. Though she knew Elle was missing from the forest now in reality, what she was seeing was her sister completely calcified beside her, stuck as a branchless trunk and devoid of life. Dela herself was still torturously conscious and nothing but twisted gray bark and roots from the waist down. This was also mirrored in the real world, as the spirit had used her powers of ice, ash, and decay to swallow up Dela's legs into a copy of what she was seeing in her mind. The area filled with the strange dead trees, some looking as if they'd always been trees, and others in various states of transformation from girl to tree. The trunk next to her looked exactly like her, minus arms and with her hair pulled up into pretty braids. Even though Dela deep down knew this wasn't real, between the overwhelming sense of fear and dread and the physicality of it, there was no stopping her panicked response of screaming. "No! I haven't failed yet!" she pleaded, both trying to convince herself and the spirit to stop this illusion. "I still have time! I have to save her first! I'll break the curse!" she groaned, clawing at the fossilization around her waist.
Right, yes, this wasn't real. After the initial panic and screaming, Dela was able to better control the fear. It wasn't real. She could double-check. Reaching out, her staff housing her crystal appeared. Though it was tainted with swirling darkness, for a brief moment she saw it for how it really was. It was still at least half clear before the spirit twisted it into complete blackness. It was enough to convince her that all was not lost. It was just a spirit, like the one who had brought up images from Cillian's past. Using her staff, she used all the strength she had to break the ice and ash around her legs, and once she succeeded she fell to the ground. The illusion broke, though she could still see the constructs of the trees. Her legs were completely numb from the ice and she was trembling from both the cold and the trauma.
Chalk it up to being unusually emotional or the fear, but Dela managed to get to her feet with some sort of desperate rage fueling her. She almost seemed crazed and was definitely not the soul who would rather pretend to be dead in a ditch or actually be dead in a ditch to get out of combat. Staff still in hand, she ran at the spirit on clumsy, frozen legs. She waved her staff out in front of her, and initially, nothing seemed to happen. The spirit was very strong and saw the motion as a failed attack, so it attacked again in kind. A cloud of ash slithered from under one of the black sleeves to gather around Dela's head, blinding and choking her. While she paused to swat it away, a shard of ice thudded into her thigh, and a haze of ominious fog started to decay her winter clothes. Once her puffy winter coat was nothing but old scraps blowing away in the wind and patches of her skin started to emerge through holes in her leggings and sweater, the skin of her extremities such as her fingers, knees, and elbows started to crack and even flake away in places, leaving painful exposed tissue. She choked down the pain into ragged grunts, changing her magical girl staff into another type of weapon. The frilly heart shape that held the crystal and the shiny metal of the handle morphed and turned to wood, growing up over the source of her magic and shrinking. In a few seconds she held a ball bat riddled with rusty nails in her bleeding hands, standing at the ready. Her eyes focused on the spirit ahead once the cloud of ash was gone, but she didn't approach. What did she plan to do?
A might neigh sounded from behind the spirit, and before it could even turn, Chester both rainbow farted and kicked the being forward and toward Dela. As it neared, she swung her bat with as much force as she could muster, obliterating the spirit into particles that soon dissipated along with her illusionary copy of the purgatory fate awaiting Dela if she failed. Thinking herself safe, relief and pain shot through her system and caused her her fall back onto her butt, doing her best not to let the tears forming in her eyes fall.
[wc: 1660 || total: 5017/ 6000 || Gift Guess, Mistletoe, Ugly sweaters complete for 6/5 peppermints. Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future defeated.]
The soft moment was interrupted by Cillian's sudden change in posture. Meeting his gaze, the blonde indeed knew what this meant. Spirits were nearby, be them undead zombies or otherwise. Could they not get through one frickin festival without some sort of disaster? Dela stiffened as well, looking around for anything out of the ordinary. Even if she was still trash at combat, her abilities granted by the magical girl crystal had grown with use, so she noticed something on the edge of her sensory range. She could have run right at it to nip this in the bud, but again, she wasn't a strong fighter. She'd wait to see what happened instead, and boy did she get a show.
It might have been a short show, but for someone as nosey as Dela was for information on everyone, the smallest glimpse into both of her equally secretive pals' hidden histories was enough to keep her enraptured in her seat instead of being helpful. She'd never seen him so genuinely shaken, and she could tell the images looming behind him were both not real and very old given the clothing style. Her mind, which was deceptively sharp, entered into a Sherlockian state and gleaned anything she could about them by observing alone. Cillian hardly needed to call them 'mom and dad' before she'd deduced it was the case, and that, if she had learned anything about Pergrandian history and language, Cillian had once been a prince. Her eyes then slipped to Cillian as she observed anger in him for the first time, though it was certainly not a surprise. He dispatched the spirit that caused this blast from the past quickly before any more information could leak, then took out a second before it could pull any shenanigans for her to learn from. Dela'd have to be satisfied with just this snippet about her infuriatingly closed-off friend (as if she wasn't a hypocrite that did the same), so she pulled out her trusty black book and started scribbling on the page titled 'Cillian'. It wasn't like her bear-trap mind could forget, but she took no chances. She never knew when something would be useful and had to make sure there was a failsafe in place to make maximum use of it all. The Rune Knights had certainly benefitted from this by now, though it had done very little for her own, more pressing ambitions.
Dela had been so focused on taking extensive notes that she hadn't noticed the third spirit sneaking up behind her. The other two had been drawn to Cillian due to his abilities, and no doubt this one was too, but it was less fussy about actually getting to the necromancer and would take whoever was closest. First, she noticed the sudden onset of abject fear without a source. The terror was so intense that she felt instantly nauseated. Slowly turning, she saw the spirit looming where a crowd used to be and had wisely run away to take cover. It was a black entity shrouded in dark fabric, with scraggly thorns and branches for a crown and collar. A bony finger raised and pointed at her as she stood. The probing in her mind was immediate, and that's when the real nightmare started.
The mind-warping abilities changed the landscape of Era into that of the magical girl wasteland, the purgatory-like forest where devoured souls contracted to Aberneel went to fossilize into what looked like dead trees. The sky overhead was black, even though the grass and trees were illuminated in twilight. This time, she wasn't there because she'd died and was visiting Elle until he could res. No, it was her turn. Her soul had been devoured by the twisted trickster. Though she knew Elle was missing from the forest now in reality, what she was seeing was her sister completely calcified beside her, stuck as a branchless trunk and devoid of life. Dela herself was still torturously conscious and nothing but twisted gray bark and roots from the waist down. This was also mirrored in the real world, as the spirit had used her powers of ice, ash, and decay to swallow up Dela's legs into a copy of what she was seeing in her mind. The area filled with the strange dead trees, some looking as if they'd always been trees, and others in various states of transformation from girl to tree. The trunk next to her looked exactly like her, minus arms and with her hair pulled up into pretty braids. Even though Dela deep down knew this wasn't real, between the overwhelming sense of fear and dread and the physicality of it, there was no stopping her panicked response of screaming. "No! I haven't failed yet!" she pleaded, both trying to convince herself and the spirit to stop this illusion. "I still have time! I have to save her first! I'll break the curse!" she groaned, clawing at the fossilization around her waist.
Right, yes, this wasn't real. After the initial panic and screaming, Dela was able to better control the fear. It wasn't real. She could double-check. Reaching out, her staff housing her crystal appeared. Though it was tainted with swirling darkness, for a brief moment she saw it for how it really was. It was still at least half clear before the spirit twisted it into complete blackness. It was enough to convince her that all was not lost. It was just a spirit, like the one who had brought up images from Cillian's past. Using her staff, she used all the strength she had to break the ice and ash around her legs, and once she succeeded she fell to the ground. The illusion broke, though she could still see the constructs of the trees. Her legs were completely numb from the ice and she was trembling from both the cold and the trauma.
Chalk it up to being unusually emotional or the fear, but Dela managed to get to her feet with some sort of desperate rage fueling her. She almost seemed crazed and was definitely not the soul who would rather pretend to be dead in a ditch or actually be dead in a ditch to get out of combat. Staff still in hand, she ran at the spirit on clumsy, frozen legs. She waved her staff out in front of her, and initially, nothing seemed to happen. The spirit was very strong and saw the motion as a failed attack, so it attacked again in kind. A cloud of ash slithered from under one of the black sleeves to gather around Dela's head, blinding and choking her. While she paused to swat it away, a shard of ice thudded into her thigh, and a haze of ominious fog started to decay her winter clothes. Once her puffy winter coat was nothing but old scraps blowing away in the wind and patches of her skin started to emerge through holes in her leggings and sweater, the skin of her extremities such as her fingers, knees, and elbows started to crack and even flake away in places, leaving painful exposed tissue. She choked down the pain into ragged grunts, changing her magical girl staff into another type of weapon. The frilly heart shape that held the crystal and the shiny metal of the handle morphed and turned to wood, growing up over the source of her magic and shrinking. In a few seconds she held a ball bat riddled with rusty nails in her bleeding hands, standing at the ready. Her eyes focused on the spirit ahead once the cloud of ash was gone, but she didn't approach. What did she plan to do?
A might neigh sounded from behind the spirit, and before it could even turn, Chester both rainbow farted and kicked the being forward and toward Dela. As it neared, she swung her bat with as much force as she could muster, obliterating the spirit into particles that soon dissipated along with her illusionary copy of the purgatory fate awaiting Dela if she failed. Thinking herself safe, relief and pain shot through her system and caused her her fall back onto her butt, doing her best not to let the tears forming in her eyes fall.
[wc: 1660 || total: 5017/ 6000 || Gift Guess, Mistletoe, Ugly sweaters complete for 6/5 peppermints. Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future defeated.]
Vera Walden-
Lineage : Evil Angel
Position : None
Posts : 170
Guild : The Rune Knights
Cosmic Coins : 10
Dungeon Tokens : 0
Experience : 6,237
Character Sheet
First Skill:
Second Skill:
Third Skill:
A LITTLE BIT OF SUGAR BUT LOTS OF POISON TOO
Happy-go-lucky Cillian was swimming in fabric and adjusting to the hobbit-friendly seating. Dela was chilling comfortably and applying zero effort to her sweater. Meanwhile, Vera was nursing the tail-end of her peppermint treat and loving it.
The littlest shift of the posture that ensued before the spoken statement was the first tale-tell sign that if something seemed too good to be true, it usually is—was. The guardedness that manifested in the pair was worthy of admiration, but from the point of view of the sixth sense Vera-Jayne severely lacked, she was in the dark. Just like everyone else. “We really are cursed.” She peered at the two through her lashes, referencing the musical jinx, the magical snow cloud, and their newly-perceived threat.
She glanced quickly around and scooted out of her chair matching their pace. The skeptical woman frowned and turned her head in the direction of the voice. It was accusatory in tone and unfamiliar to her. The same could not be said for their ally as he fell upon the ground and laid in a slovenly heap. She looked at him in worry, and then dropped down to her knees, and tried to support him as best she could. After a moment of terrible silence, Vera gazed into the eyes of literal royalty and their uncanny resemblance to their boy minus, of course, the tomato-red flush that peppered his father’s face and vile bearing.
She couldn’t shake the look of surprise. She tried to assimilate what she had learned and the effort was not discreet. No words broke from her lips as he got back up on his feet. Doing just as he did, Vera caught a glimpse of the wounded Knight being ensnared by the ashes of her memories, and suddenly an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for these spirits consumed her. Not even Chester’s very presence could snap her out of this dreadful mood. Vera was too sober for this. She glanced rashly around for the mage responsible for this unwarranted exposure and moved quickly through the snow. Something in her worsened, slowing down her determined stride and stilling every bone in her body.
Inch by inch the recollection of that night wormed with silent blood-stained feet into her brain and replicated itself there with stripes of red and white melted grotesquely in a blaze of gold. The crimson gleam of the once outlandishly-dressed, the hearts and souls of the circus, adorned the gaping maw of a very large tigress. Tearing and snapping the limbs clean off her tormentors, the feline of many scars thrived and relished their pain and so had a tall lanky figure in the distance. He had his back turned to her, obscuring his most recognizable features—despite the flames.
"Jes-!" faltered the former heiress, "stop! Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare show him to me! I’m sick of this.”
As she stumbled through the destruction to get to the boy, the hands of her kin seemed to be dragging her down to their level, asking her, with bodies so mangled and deformed, to lie with them and never wake up. For nearly a minute of struggling, she listened, waiting, eyes bright with consideration.
She didn’t deserve to live, after all.
With a grave sense of loss, Vera watched her friends. She knew it was best to tune out and say nothing.
She was sickly astounded at the sudden tiredness that her magic had produced, and, feeling a chunk of her life force leave her crumbling frame, a crudely built man that had taken her place when she was in shambles, a dust-imbued knife-thrower, threw his precious daggers diligently at multiple targets. Nothing truly hit until he managed to pierce the child’s spine; a startling cry quickly pervaded the air as it struck something, or someone else.
Her creation had merely shot a dagger into the air and hit a mark. It was too deep of a voice to have belonged to the ghostly youth. And the constant gurgling that followed after the attack was not signatory to any spirit nor was the knife he incidentally caught his throat.
The owner of that horrendous gagging perished. An old man with only a face a mother could love was found dead shortly after his second round of spirits met their end. In that same fashion, so had the knife-thrower becoming nothing more than a pile of dust.
Vera unwittingly reconstructed herself upon the snowy ground. She was hardly aware of their gain, and barely conscious at all. In her final moments, in that place before sleep, she had seen his face and in his eyes she saw her trust and adoration disappear along with her heart as she finally passed out.
Cillian duCrosse-
Lineage : Legend of the Lich
Position : None
Posts : 175
Guild : Confidence Intl.
Cosmic Coins : 0
Dungeon Tokens : 0
Experience : 394,517
Character Sheet
First Skill: Necrothurgy
Second Skill:
Third Skill:
Even though my life hasn't been all that great
768/2321 WORDS @Dela @Vera Walden THEME SONG I have seen war, famine; witnessed the genocide. Have seen the changes in human nature and history, and I am still here, standing alone. Til the end, I will be there too. To witness the endless carnage, to live this harsh reality. Cause I have been cursed, Cursed with immortality. | Well this was just getting crazy, and not in a fun way. One second he was seeing his parents again for the first time in hundreds of years, opening that buried trauma right up, and the next second Era itself had been turned into some kind of weird hellscape filled with rows upon rows of petrified trees. Not only that, but Dela herself looked like she was turning into one of said dead trees. Cillian knew it was an illusion, so he didn’t panic. Rather he absently soaked in the details even as he searched around for the ghost serving as the source of the illusion, who had disappeared from sight the moment the spell had been cast, as well as for the man that had summoned the spirits. Truthfully, he was too distracted by Dela to focus right away though. Why was she talking about not failing? About still having time? The curse she mentioned was something he could deduce -- after all, he already knew that she was cursed with undeath like he was. But what about the woman she mentioned trying to save? Lots of questions, and no time to ask them. He could only watch as Dela devolved into a very palpable anger that he’d never seen from her before, the blonde summoning her staff and using it to free herself from the bindings currently around her. Between her and Chester’s appearance, the third ghost didn’t stand a chance. He hated to see her get so hurt, but Cillian knew that Dela could handle herself when push came to shove, and if they were truly going to be done with this it was the old man they needed to find. Besides, between the two he was more concerned about Vera’s wellbeing, as she was the only one between the three of them whose death would be quite permanent if it came down to that, a sentiment he was sure Dela shared. Unfortunately, the old man was able to strike while Cillian was distracted watching Dela get hurt, and as soon as the field of trees was gone it was replaced by what appeared to be a… circus? It must have been a memory, for Vera demanded not to be shown whatever it is that she had already seen once before. Then, the purple haired woman stumbled to her feet. What happened after that was difficult for even Cillian to process as he watched a knife thrower take the place of Vera, tossing their weapons toward various targets until it hit a child whose scream sounded most unlike a child’s would. When the chaos faded and everything returned to normal, Cillian was left standing there to see the old man dead with a knife in his throat, his resummoned ghosts gone, Vera passed out on the snowy ground, and Dela sitting in a growing pool of her own blood looking very much like she was on the verge of tears. Thinking fast, the former prince rushed over to Vera and checked her pulse and breathing to make sure she was alive. She didn’t appear injured, and thankfully the snow on the ground was thick enough that he wasn’t worried about her having hurt herself too badly. Once he was sure he could move her without injuring her, he quickly scooped her up and brought her closer to Dela before laying the dust mage gently back on the snow and turning his full attention to Dela. He carefully removed his long jacket and draped it over her shoulders without a word, given that a great deal of her clothing had been torn to shreds, leaving himself fully bare chested in the winter cold for the time being. Then, assuming she didn’t fight him about it, he took her hands carefully and poured a bit of his magic into her to heal the wounds enough to stop the bleeding and hopefully dull the ache. Even after he was done, he still held her hands for a moment, somehow sensing that she may need the reassurance even if he wasn’t actively aware of that realization. His crimson gaze trailed back and forth between Dela and the unconscious Vera a few times before looking up to realize that other people were starting to gather around. “Come on…” he told the blonde softly, “Let’s go someplace a little quieter… and less crowded.” When Dela was ready, he’d help her stand up to her feet before bending down to scoop Vera up again. Then, he’d led them some place a little more private where they could recover in peace and solitude. |
I figure that if I live long enough, something good might happen.
